7/21/22
9:00 am

Using TextEdit Instead of Mac Notes

While Notes has become a robust system on the Mac, using TextEdit has some advantages such as recovering deleted information, restoring from Time Machine, and being able to store information alongside other files in a project.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you an alternative to using the Notes App on your Mac. 
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Now while the Notes App has gotten better and better with each version of macOS, it still lacks in some areas. For instance, it's easy to accidentally delete something from a note or a whole note itself and not have anyway to recover it. There's no version. You can't go back to an earlier version and you can't recover a deleted note. This makes it a poor choice to store critical information. But if you want to store information in Notes you're not restricted to just the Notes App. You can actually use regular documents. The Notes App stores everything in kind of a container with a library of notes in it. You can't see the individual notes as files. But you can certainly use an app to store individual documents, each one being a note. Now you could use something complex for that like Pages or Microsoft Word. But you could also just use TextEdit on your Mac. 
TextEdit actually works a lot like Notes except that you actually see each individual note as a file and you can easily revert to an older version. Plus it is easy to restore lost notes with Time Machine. 
So if you're going to use TextEdit for notes you can store the notes anyway you want. You could put individual text files in folders with other files for that project or however you like to organize. If you want them to be more like the Notes App you can create a folder called Notes. I put it here in my Documents folder under iCloud Drive. In this folder you can see a whole bunch of different notes. I've stored each one as an individual file. I like to view these in List View and you can see them clearly here with Date Modified and other information. You can access anyone of these on your Mac. All you have to do is double click it. So, for instance, I can double click this note here and it opens up in TextEdit. Now TextEdit can actually use two different formats. Rich Text or Plain Text. I'm going to assume that you're going to want to use Rich Text here to get a lot of the extra benefit like having links and being able to style text like that. Rich Text basically gives you all the functionality that you've got in the Notes App plus more. 
For instance, I can easily use the controls up here to create a highlight behind some text. Since these are normal documents I can use Save just like I could with any document. In Notes you don't have that. You just make changes and they are automatically saved. But since you do Save, that means I can use Revert To and Revert To Last Opened or Browse All Versions of this particular file. So I can go back in time. If I delete something a few days ago I can go back to the version from before then and I can actually select the text and copy and paste it out or I can Restore to the version if I want. That makes using Textedit documents a lot more robust than using Notes. You can create as many of these files as you want. You can create new folders to hold the files so you can have a whole structure in here or, as I said before, you can actually put the notes where they belong. So if you have a project you're working on, like some video files, a spreadsheet, there's some pdf's, and you want to have a note that goes along with that you could just store that document right there in that folder. It doesn't have to be grouped with the other notes. 
Now you can see here it's easy to add Links and you could also add images as well. So, for instance, here's a note in a TextEdit document. I added an image to it. That makes it a more complex rtfd format which allows you to have images. I've got this image in here. It's just a screenshot so it was easy to include. Note you can still use Markup here. So I can actually markup this image here. You could actually see this as a cropped image that's in there. So there's more to it than just that. But I could draw on it or, you know, add a circle to something. You can see that appear there in the note now.
You could to Lists and Tables in Rich Text documents as well. You can see under Format here you have a complete set of formatting options and you have lists and tables. For Lists you have a lot of different options right here. You can see the different kinds of lists that you can create. You even have Styles to choose from. You can see here I can easily choose the Fonts and things. But I could also expand this a little bit and you can see here I've got Styles and I could Show Styles. Bring this up. Add favorite styles and things like that. 
Now when I comes to things like Tagging you can actually just use hashtags like this. When you search with Spotlight it actually searches the contents of files like Text and Rich Text documents. So if I put hashtag Meetings in here it's not anything special. It's just regular text. But if I go into Spotlight and search for hashtag Meetings you could see here, under Documents, two notes that I've created come up here because it had that inside.  But there's more!  You can actually select a file here and use the tags in the Finder. If I do Command i to get Info, you could see I can add Tags and use Finder Tags here. In addition, the note itself can have tags inside of it. If you go to File, and then Show Properties, you see here there are key words here and you could add something here, like that. You see how it adds that as a tag in there and now in Spotlight, when I search, you could see that comes up.
The advantage though to using Finder Tags in here is that you can also tag other files. So if you have, say, a video file and a spreadsheet and you want those to remain separate documents you can add the same tag for those two and for the rtf file with your notes in it and then find them all at once when you a search for that tag. You can also, of course, come up with good names for the individual files themselves. Now of course I mentioned Time Machine before and if you are using Time Machine, and since these are regular files you can delete one and then say, Oops! I need to get it back and then actually enter Time Machine and now go back in time, get that file, and restore it. 
Well, this all seems too good to be true. Like why wouldn't we just use TextEdit all the time instead of the Notes App. Well, there is one major drawback. That is that syncing to the iPhone and iPad doesn't work as well because there is no TextEdit app for the iPhone or iPad. You can go into the Files App and into iCloud Drive and see that Notes folder or any Notes you have stored there. You can actually view them right there in the Files App very easily. So you have access to the information but editing them is much tougher. There's no official TextEdit App. Most 3rd party apps fall short. A lot of them claim to edit TextEdit files but they only really edit plain text files, not the Rich Text ones where you can include links and such. Even the ones that do edit Rich Text files don't actually edit the rtfd documents, the ones that can include images. So you are really limited as to what you can put into a note or you just can't open it up in an app on the iPhone.
Now, you can use the Pages App to open up any TextEdit document, including ones with images. You can actually edit it in Pages. But when you save it it saves it out as a new Pages document. It doesn't replace the TextEdit document. You have to export as a TextEdit document in order to get back into TextEdit. It's a pain. It's not something you really want to do on your iPhone. So for now the solution is mainly for people that use their Notes almost completely on their Mac and maybe only, occasionally, to refer to them but not Edit them on the iPhone or iPad. It is still possible to do. It's just not easy. So an alternative in that case may be to go all the way up to using Pages. Pages, of course, can do all these things and much more. You can work with them just as easily on the iPhone and iPad as you can on the Mac. Pages documents are going to be a little bit bigger and Pages take maybe a few more seconds to launch so it is maybe not as convenient. But it is an option you should explore. 
So what do I use? Well, I do use the Notes App for some things. But I also use TextEdit for others. It's okay to combine them. For instance, for every single video I create, and you know I create by the week, well, there's a little Notes file. Can you imagine if I store that in Notes how many thousands of notes I would have at this point for individual episodes. I store those as TextEdit files and I put them with the other documents for that episode. I can screen flow files, exported video, the thumbnails, all of that. So you don't have to choose just one solution. You can use Notes for some things where it makes sense for you and you can use TextEdit or Pages documents where it makes sense to use those. Hope this gives you something to think about. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 25 Responses to “Using TextEdit Instead of Mac Notes”

Frank Scully

2 years ago

One reason I can't completely wean myself from NOTES is I share with others some of my notes where we each can update the note. One example is a food shopping list with checkmarks. As anyone in our family notices something to add to the list they simply uncheck it, then when purchased it is check marked again.

Peter Dube

2 years ago

Damn you Gary! smile. A year ago I spent weeks converting all of my OneNote files to Apple Notes! Now I get to do it all over again to Text/Edit and or Pages. I do know what you are talking about with the limitations of where Notes files are stored, not an ideal situation. Much rather use Folders and sub folders!

Well, thanks again for a VERY valuable sharing of the advanced knowledge that you have!

I wonder if Apple is considering or working on how to sync and edit rtf and rtfd's

Fran H

2 years ago

Thanks for very informative video. Use of TextEdit in place of Notes would solve some issues I have been experiencing that you mentioned...However, the drawbacks you noted
are important to consider.. Apple has some things it can improve in this area for sure.

Lawrence

2 years ago

You mentioned using Pages as Notes. Is there a way to set up Pages as Notes? That is to say, have a key command to easy access procedure that will always store whatever you enter in the Cloud so I can access it on my Laptop when out of the office.

Swapy

2 years ago

Your videos are always insightful however I cannot disagree more on this one. Text Edit is rubbish beyond imagination. I have tried to look to get other applications like notepad++ but couldn't get. Using Notes at least gives you a seamless integration with iPhone. Text edit is just absolute rubbish.

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

Lawrence: Not sure what you mean by "key command to easy access procedure." By using Pages document as Notes I mean just create Pages documents. Certainly store them in an iCloud Drive folder(s). Organize as you like.

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

Swapy: What, exactly, makes TextEdit "rubbish?" What don't you like about it. It does what it is supposed to do very well. Maybe you are expecting features it just isn't meant to have?

Nupe Flossberg

2 years ago

Gary, I wholeheartedly agree with you. I always encourage people to save mission critical data into actual documents rather than the Notes app. The app that is used can vary and would be best decided by the user themselves based on device availability. I have seen folks lose Notes data and become more than distraught upon being told that there is no way to restore them. I illustrate this as having your legal documents on a series of real Post It Notes, or printed out as an actual document.

Peter Dube

2 years ago

Gary, So I decided to start to convert from Notes to Pages for all the reasons that you described. Plus I need a project. Hit a snag in Pages. How do I create an interactive check box, one that I can make a make or remove a checkmark in with any device, Mac iPhone etc? Thanks a bunch!

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

Peter: You can't. You can just put a character, like a box, and then use a checkmark. Or any variation like that. In text files the usual thing to use was [ ] for unchecked and [x] for checked.

Dana Schwartz

2 years ago

Notes should absolutely be recoverable via Time Machine.

(Why hasn’t anyone mentioned that Mail messages are no longer recoverable via Time Machine? Found that out with a recent massive loss of mail contents from the old unfixed Catalina bug, while using Monterey. TG for Mail Archiver X.)

peter dube

2 years ago

thanks Gary. Simple is elegant. [X] - Bananas

Peter Dube

2 years ago

Now that I think I will convert from Notes to Pages, is there an efficient way to do the Notes to Pages conversion. Simply copy and paste?

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

Peter: Copy and paste, organize along the way. You don't need to choose one or the other. You probably have things that work better in Notes, and other things that work better as documents.

Ann MacKay

2 years ago

Wow! I have a new respect for TextEdit. I did not realize there were so many features! Thanks for the video.

Peter Dube

2 years ago

Ann MacKay: I agree, who knew about all the capabilities included in what appeared to be a simple text editor. The thing that convinced me to choose Pages instead of TextEdit was the ability to have access to the “note” on all devices.

This switch was triggered by Gary letting us know there was no recovery if you accidentally delete a Note! I have mission critical info in my Notes ensemble. About 273 different Notes! Legal stuff. Stuff that cant easily be recreated. Imagine deleteing

peter dube

2 years ago

In making the conversion from Notes to Pages, by selecting All in notes and pasting to Pages. You need to be aware that embedded PDFs in Notes will result in only the first page of the PDF being copied over. Just a FYI.

Bent, Denmark

2 years ago

As always you are many steps ahead of me. I had started - by intuition - what you describe, but first now it has been put into a frame of philosophy and principles. Your video has been a great help.

Kathy

2 years ago

Hi Gary, Wonderful video as always, thank you. Is there a certain number of 'Notes' one can keep in the Notes App or are the number of Notes allowed related only to the amount of iCloud storage you have? Thank you.

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

Kathy: I don't think there is any limit on the number of notes you can have.

Judith

2 years ago

I'm a great fan of TextEdit!

My favorite feature of TextEdit is the ability to select text and move it around by dragging and dropping. I'm also able to drag and drop text from TextEdit to other applications like Mail and Pages.

Gary, I learned about the drag and drop feature from one of your earlier videos about Mac hidden features.

Thanks!

D Heinrich

2 years ago

The great strength of Notes is having all the info automatically sync to my iPhone. I can type a few notes on the Mac, race out and have them accessible on the phone immediately. And vice versa. But I did learn here, thank you, that there is no backup to Notes. That is shocking. I thought Time Machine was intended to restore the state of your computer completely in the case of a theft or such. I guess the thing to do is to not keep documents in Notes long term. Keep the notes to a minimum.

nick

2 years ago

Gary, I noticed the comments weren't closed for this topic so hope you can help. I can't seem to find an easy way to rename a note. Typically it uses the first line to generate the name of the note, but that's not happening in one case. I don't understand why Apple doesn't just have a "Rename Note" option. thx

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

nick: It should just be the first line. Not sure why that one note isn't changing for you. Is the note in iCloud, or some other system? Have you tried simply creating a new note with the right first line, then copying and pasting the rest.

nick

2 years ago

Just as a follow up...I tried copying and pasting all the content into a new note, but because of the variety of content (links, screenshots, text etc) it wasn't pasting properly. I duplicated the note and I was able to insert text at the top of the note and that worked. Not sure what the problem was, but I left feedback for Apple to ask for the Rename feature. I love using Notes but it could be enhanced greatly with that feature I think.

Comments Closed.

Using TextEdit Instead of Mac Notes

Comments: 25 Responses to “Using TextEdit Instead of Mac Notes”

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